Glossary · Hosting & DevOps
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Overview
What GCP is
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is Google's public cloud, one of the three major providers alongside Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. It offers hundreds of services you access over the internet and pay for by usage, from raw virtual machines to fully managed databases and machine-learning APIs, so you can scale infrastructure up or down without buying hardware.
Key services
Common building blocks include Compute Engine (virtual machines), Cloud Run and GKE (containers and Kubernetes), and Cloud Storage (files and backups), plus managed databases like Cloud SQL and Firestore. BigQuery handles large-scale analytics, and Vertex AI covers machine learning. Services connect through Google's global network, with security and access controls managed centrally.
How a full-service agency applies it
We use GCP to host and scale the products we build, running SaaS backends, mobile app services, and data pipelines on managed infrastructure so clients aren't maintaining servers. It also underpins automation: an n8n workflow or scheduled job can run on Cloud Run, and Firebase, part of Google Cloud, often powers mobile app development with authentication, storage, and real-time data.
Where we use it
Related Zen in Tech services
How our team puts Google Cloud Platform to work in real projects.
FAQ
Google Cloud Platform — common questions
What is GCP used for?
GCP is used to host websites and apps, store and back up data, run databases and analytics, train and serve AI models, and build scalable backends, all on Google's infrastructure and paid for by usage.
GCP vs AWS vs Azure?
All three are leading public clouds with overlapping services. AWS has the largest market share and service catalog, Azure integrates tightly with Microsoft enterprise tools, and GCP is known for strengths in data analytics (BigQuery), Kubernetes, and machine learning. The best fit depends on your existing stack and workloads.
Is Google Cloud Platform expensive?
GCP uses pay-as-you-go pricing with per-second billing on many services, sustained-use and committed-use discounts, and a free tier. Costs depend entirely on what you run; without governance, cloud spend can grow unexpectedly, which is why usage monitoring matters.
Keep exploring
Related terms
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